45 Million Is Looking for
Somebody

The is the Coté Bar - the other side
is the coté bistro.

Home-Made Music CDs Might be Piracy

Paris:- Sunday, 31. January 1999:- Next Tuesday,
somebody is going the become 45,277,015 francs poorer if
they don't take their winning Loto ticket to where it needs
to be cashed in. This is the equivalent of just under eight
million dollars at stake here.

On Tuesday, 2. December 1998, someone walked into Le
Diablotin bar on Montmartre and paid 32 francs for a Loto
ticket with the numbers 15, 21, 24, 26, 38 and 40 on it. As
it was purchased on a Tuesday, the loto machine probably
spit out the ping-pong balls with these numbers on the day
after.

The organization that runs the Loto doesn't like big
winners not to show up because it is kind of
demoralizing to those who play regularly
without winning a button. So they have put out a 'winner
wanted' appeal, and similar efforts has worked twice in the
past.

In both cases, the winners had gone on vacations,
unaware of their good fortune. 'Good fortune' is what I
call coming back from holidays to learn that I've become a
millionaire; but so far this has eluded me.

The
suburban bistro in Sèvres has a garden for dining in
season.

Meanwhile, this mystery is driving the owners of Le
Diablotin crazy. Everybody who comes in wants to know if
the winner has showed up yet. Somebody else won 30 million
on the Loto at this bar, and the owner wants to break his
'record.'

If the winner doesn't show up with a good ticket within
60 days - in this case, about to expire - the win gets
tossed back into the pot. France's biggest Loto jackpot was
for 150 million francs; won on 20. March 1997, by a
grandmother in Asnières just outside
Paris.

Consumers Rip Off Music Producers

I don't know if anybody remembers the introduction of
the digital-audio cassette tape recorder. When they came
out, the music industry set up such a howl about pirate
copying, that the recorder manufacturers had to put in some
device to stop the machines from recording - which sort of
made them useless for anything other than listening to very
expensive pre-recorded DAT tapes. Sales did not boom.

The recordable CD has taken some time to get here, but
now they are available at consumer electronics' prices.
One-time recordable blank CDs cost about a dollar, so guess
what's happening.

Right! All the kids who cannot afford the horribly
inflated retail prices of audio CDs, are getting together
to buy CD-recorders and the latest hit audio CDs, and are
multiplying them like rabbits and selling them to their
friends for peanuts.

While the recording industry has had its head in a sand
dune worrying about bad people pumping music through the
Internet, the barn door has been left open to massive
piracy. They say they are losing zillions.

It's about time. They've had a 25-year monopoly on
inflated profits; which added up to a lot of money they did
not bother reinvesting in new talent. Look at all the
re-issues they put out.

The music industry is about having a monopoly of control
of the talent. To keep it, they killed DAT. Now recordable
CDs are going to turn a monopoly situation into something
like the Internet - where everybody and anybody can publish
just about anything - for the cost of peanuts.

The recordable CD means that 'garage' bands will be able
to produce themselves and manufacture their product.
They'll sell by word-of-mouth; and if they talk up a 'hit'
- then - logically the music industry will be given the job
of worldwide distribution.

This will mean that the industry giants will be freed
from the tedious business of finding talent and will be
able to buy into titlesthat have already been tested in
the real market. In this way a 'bad' thing will turn into a
'good' thing; and the listening public may even get some
good, new music to hear.